Thursday, 12 April 2018

KADISH-YEHUDA SILMAN

KADISH-YEHUDA
SILMAN (December 12, 1881-December 17, 1937)

He was born in Butrimonts (Butrimonys),
Vilna district, Lithuania.He studied in
the Slobodka yeshiva and in the Vilna Gaon’s house of study.He began writing around 1899.He published poetry, feature pieces, and articles
for Hamelits (The advocate), and from
that point in time he contributed stories, critical essays, and children’s
plays to a variety of Hebrew-language periodicals.He wrote under more than fifty
pseudonyms.In Jerusalem where he lived
from 1907, he brought out: historical pamphlets in Hebrew; an anthology entitled
Lekhu neranena, shivim shire-am (Go
and sing, seventy folksongs) (Tel Aviv, 1927/1928), 80 pp.; a collection of
stories entitled Sansanim, shneim-asar
sipurim (Twigs, twelve stories) (Jerusalem, 1929), 170 pp.; and Ivrit ḥaya, sefer limud hadibur haivri ligedolim,
a lehr-bukh far dervaksene vi tsu reden hebreish (Hebrew lives, a textbook
for adults to speak Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1929), 220 pp.He also placed work in: Haarets (The land) in Tel Aviv, Doar
hayom (Today’s mail) in Jerusalem, Hadoar
(The mail) in New York, and Haolam (The
world) in Vilna.He participated in the
community life of the new settlement.He
served as secretary of the “Merkaz hamorim” (The teachers’ center) and
cofounded the Hebrew high school in Jerusalem where he worked as a teacher for about
twenty years.In Yiddish he only
published a feuilleton in a local newspaper (under the pen name “A realist on
kneplekh” [A realist without buttons]) and an article in Warsaw’s Veg (Path) (under the pen name
Ester).From Yiddish to Hebrew he
translated: two plays by Yankev Gordin, Haelohim,
haadam vehasatan (God, man, and devil [original: Got, mentsh un tayvl] in Jerusalem’s Haḥerut
(Freedom), which also appeared in book form (Jerusalem, 1914/1915), and Elisha ben avuya(Elisha, son of Avuya [original: Elishe ben abuye])
(Jerusalem, 1916)—both plays were staged in Hebrew theaters in the land of
Israel; Dovid Pinski’s Hamashiaḥ hailem
(The mute messiah [original: Der shturmer
meshiekh] in Tel Aviv’s weekly Hayishuv
(The settlement), which also appeared in book form in 1925; S. D. Rivkin’s
novel Dam vadin, sipur miyeme alilat
hadam bevelizsh (Blood and judgment, a story from the era of the blood
libel in Velizh [original: Der velizher
blut-bilbl]) (Tel Aviv, 1933), 183 pp.; over fifty Yiddish folksongs sung
in the land of Israel; and poems by Avrom Reyzen—“May ko mashme lon” (What does
it all mean?), “Hemerl” (Hammer), and “Dos gebet” (The plea)—and by Shimon
Frug, among others.He died in
Jerusalem.